After all home market book publication activities had been shuttered in 2003, the focus of the group shifted towards music, video, and entertainment experiences – such as the StarVista cruises – exclusively.

Its products have once been sold worldwide throughout the Americas, Europe, Australasia, and Asia via television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales.

Activities were largely restricted to the North American home market afterwards, and operations were until recently focused on the US and Canada alone with very limited retail distribution overseas, ceasing all together in 2023.

It remained independent from both however, even though the company could in the beginning draw on the editorial services of both for their early 1960s book series, particularly where pictorial content was concerned.

The subsidiary moved out of the New York City premises to its own headquarters in Chicago, USA after that building had finished construction in 1969 (though it had left the book division at New York for the editorial convenience of having the Time and Life pictorial archives nearby),[3] before it relocated back east again to 8280 Willow Oaks Corporate Drive, Fairfax, VA 22031 in 1986 where it remained until its ultimate demise in 2023.

Its 1271 Avenue of the Americas location became Time-Life's nascent headquarters as well in the first years of its existence after Time & Life had shortly before relocated from its previous premises in Rockefeller Center in 1960.

As a brand, Time-Life actually outlived its sire by five years, as the remnants of Time & Life went defunct in early 2018 after a steady three-decades long decline (mirroring in effect the misfortunes of its erstwhile progeny), with its handful of surviving assets being broken up and sold piecemeal to a variety of third-party outsiders.

[24] On the first volume in the 1966–70 Library of Art series (the eighth one Time-Life took in production at the time) for example, American artist Rockwell Kent commented, "It would be hard for me to overstate my delight in "The World of Michelangelo" – not merely for its superb reproductions of the master’s work but for the textual and pictorial presentation.

The 1978–80 The Good Cook series, edited by Richard Olney, featured likewise contributions from Jeremiah Tower, fe Grigson, Michel Lemonnier, and many others.

Content of all of these earlier series was somewhat academic in tone and presentation, providing the basics of the subjects in the way it might be done in a lecture aimed at the general public.

[1] The same held equally true for the slightly earlier 1963–64 The LIFE History of the United States series where each of the volumes was written by an American historian of contemporary renown.

However, historians were forced to largely rewrite Mayan history after their script had been fully unlocked and modern technology had revolutionized Maya archeology in the 21st century, making the Time Life book entries on the subject obsolete and outdated.

The books though, regardless of their perceived quality, are easy to find at low prices on used-book markets, due to their being published in millions of copies.

Nonetheless, Time-Life Books was still able to sell 20 million books in 1985, which, at a US$260 million turnover that year (after having suffered a disastrous sales plunge to a mere US$1,6 million two years earlier[28]), made the subsidiary the largest single earning component of Time-Life, Inc. at that particular point in time – though it had to lay off over 200 employees (out of the total 1,243 employee pool of 1983, spread over ten worldwide offices[28]) and shutter the Mexico City (Time-Life International de Mexico S.A. de C.V.) and Tokyo, Japan (Time Life International Publishing) operations to turn around the dramatic net operating losses suffered earlier that decade,[29] but which also heralded the beginning of Time-Life Books' gradual withdrawal from the Far Eastern and Latin-American markets.

Non-USA-specific topic series were habitually translated into other languages (French being the most predominant, due to Time Life's desire to have to bordering French-Canada served as well), and disseminated through local branches of Time-Life Books in the intended target markets.

For several, usually smaller language areas, Time-Life regularly resorted to licensing out their publications to local publishers, as was for example the case with The Old West and The Enchanted World series.

One major such licensee had been Barcelona, Spain-based Ediciones Folio, S.A. who for decades was signed for several Spanish-language series editions in Europe – for Latin America Time-Life Books resorted to (smaller) local publishers on an ad-hoc basis.

The Dutch language versions of History of the World (as "Time Life Wereld Geschiedenis"), The Epic of Flight (as "De Geschiedenis van de Luchtvaart"), The Enchanted World (as "Het Rijk der Fabelen"), and Mysteries of the Unknown (no Dutch series title) series, for example, were shy of four, seven, eight, and a whopping twenty-five volumes in translation respectively.

[11] The European "Time Life Books B.V." Amsterdam subsidiary branch and its three satellite offices elsewhere in Europe though, held out for a few years longer before they too were all closed down simultaneously in late August 2009 – which incidentally, coincided with the first filing for bankruptcy of Time-Life Inc.'s then-mother company, Reader's Digest Association[41] – after which all remaining book publishing activities were suspended indefinitely.

Despite Ripplewood's stated intent to return to the book business,[12] it had the already near-empty Alexandria office premises vacated in 2004 after its acquisition of Time Life, laying off what was left of the former Time-Life Books, Inc. staff and outsourcing remaining operations like customer service, order processing and distribution to third-party companies in Iowa, Pennsylvania and Kentucky instead.

Subsequent owner Mosaic Media Investment Partners too, kept the Fairfax premises open as the non-print Time-Life seat until the altogether shuttering of the company in 2023.

[4] The from 2004 onward unrelated Time [& Life], Inc./Time Warner however, continued until the late-2010s to publish similar print material for the home market through New York City-based Time Home Entertainment, Inc. (founded in the early 1990s),[43] but as publisher of retail single-title books only instead of (direct marketed) book series,[19] which they themselves had already scrubbed entirely in the preceding year, deeming them "too unprofitable".

But until the mid-1980s, Time Life did not feature a rock music-intensive series for customers, preferring to cater to older adults with conservative music tastes.

Like the earlier series, each volume issued had its own paperback booklet containing liner notes and information about the songs, with the addition of placement on various Billboard magazine charts.

[58] There was a difference though; did Time Life Books contend itself with the standard one-to-two minute long commercials, Time Life Music also made much more use of half hour commercials, which they poured in the guise of documentaries, the so-called "infomercials", and not rarely presented by artists whose music was presented on the underlying release.

Key selling points of these collections are that each track was digitally transferred to the desired format using the original master recordings, as opposed to being "re-records"; and that the most popular and requested songs by customers could be found in a single collection (as opposed to a customer having to purchase many albums to obtain just a few desired tracks).

Until May 2024, the company's website only listed a toll-free number for assistance and the Time-Life infomercial channel has been pulled from all cable services, before it went permanently dark altogether.

Under the combined "Time Life/Saguaro Roads Records" label, albums have been released with Adam Hood, Blind Boys of Alabama, Bo Bice, Brandy and Ray J, Collin Raye, Dion, Edwin McCain, Hank Williams (estate), Jim Brickman, Joan Osborne, Lonestar, Marc Cohn, Mark Chesnutt, Patty Loveless, Rebecca Lynn Howard, Tanya Tucker, The Grascals, Angie Stone, Waylon Jennings and Don McLean.

[64] Saguaro Roads Records though, was excluded from the deal when RDA had to sell Time Life to Mosaic Media Investment Partners in 2013, but has remained dormant ever since.